


Never Sleep Again

by LadyBraken



Series: Terrorfest- Halloween 2019 [2]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Haunting, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nature, The Beauty Of Being Known
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-26 23:40:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21109088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyBraken/pseuds/LadyBraken
Summary: It felt like a curse - perhaps it was.





	Never Sleep Again

It felt like a curse - perhaps it was. 

I have survived: my eyes, opened and seeing, admired the world. I didn’t lie, when my mouth opened to speak of wonders. There were. Everywhere around: the perfect geometry of chaos, the cool peace of growling strength, the awe of life, even here, even now. I see and I see and I see and my eyes are never full enough. 

Sometimes I dream: dreams were like scavengers, tearing apart the thin veil of awe. Until there was nothing to return to, until there was nothing of what I once was. Yet in the morning, I woke without a heart, empty,  _ empty _ \- 

\- and I remade it, bit by bit, keeping my eyes open.

I dreaded the night, the true, too true nights. I feared the teeth in my flesh, I feared the cold upon my mind. 

I dreaded the truth. 

_ Why _ ?

I saw so much, I knew so much. There was so much in me, the truth would fit there too. My consciousness was a stream...

It occurred to me there was nothing to fear. Teeth were beautiful pieces of ivory, cold the maker of ice lace. Each snowflake was an artwork, each atom a piece of the cosmos. And I was, I was-

Gone, but less than gone. 

A shift.

I stayed eyes open when the sun set asleep. The pinnacle of my day was at night. Was when the sky shot colors like a delighted child. There was nothing else, at that moment. My very being disappeared. 

My past, memories long gone, but my present too. 

The fear of future. 

I listened to the tune of the stars and danced to it without a move. 

After awhile, I noticed I wasn’t cold. The wind was the ebb and tide of me, pushing my mind from one place to another. Ebb, tide, ebb, tide, like the push of a cloud against distant stars. The breath of the earth. Between the strokes of the days, I laid on the dots of the rocks. I erred, I watched. So many things to watch, so many airs to breathe. 

God is in all realms, someone once said. Someone with a name and a face, both erased for these words. Beauty; beauty was in all realms. There was beauty in a laugh, in a tear, in the flowers, in the fire. In the feelings of mankind, in love and hate, too. I awed at the wrinkle of a scream, my heart filled with the tenderness of a hand. I saw and I saw and I saw and there was nothing but good anymore. 

I knew I had been tired, but I wasn’t. 

I wasn’t. 

And then I saw it. Him,him, him. The dot on the white, the eyes remembering. I had known this being. I had known these eyes - yet never like I knew them now. They were sad, so sad, and that too was beautiful. I wanted to speak - to put limits in the feelings, in the rush of a thousand sparks. I had loved all of them fully, and they had loved me the same. I had loved you fully and you loved me the same. Be kind, be good. You have so little time - But that time, I gave you. 

Be. 

_ Be. _

And I felt and I felt and I felt so much and so little. I felt the skin of this man, of this soul, like I felt the rocks and the ice and the snow. I felt the fur of a bear, like I felt the blade of a knife. I felt his tears as they were my own, and I held onto them. 

But no one would listen yet - there were no words to listen too. I knew they understood, I knew. I saw and watched. Lichen on a moss, a child tucked under a chin, a hand on a shoulder, some blood upon the snow. Dots and dots and dots, lines and circles, like an effervescent spiral of all.

And yet in the middle of all this, I felt the man like an anchor. What he had always been. Close, so very close. 

He rose his head. “Harry?” I heard him whisper.

It was full of emotion, this whisper. Longing, joy, a veil of sadness too. Disbelief. Yes - he had recognised. Without his eyes, without his ears, he had felt and recognised Harry. He had put a name - a long, long forgotten name - on something that I had been. And even if I couldn’t quite remember the facts - the moments- there were others things crossing me. The feeling of a hand on my shoulder, the tenderness of words I needed to hear. The eyes too - always telling a thousand things his tongue couldn’t dare. 

I would have thought these things would feel like dust - after everything. They do. Stardust, as wondrous as bland.

  
  


And after a while, the man I had known disappeared. And I went, ebb and flow, in and out. Mountains fell, snow melted. I saw birth and flesh, I saw colors and shapes. I was never there, but always seeing, always watching. There was so much, so  _ much _ , and I wanted to see it all. 

I had never been held by men. I would be held by the world. 

I felt like a curse - the curse of being. 

But I went, I went, to never sleep again. 


End file.
